Take My Congresswoman (Cori Bush) – PLEASE!

St. Louis — The 1st Congressional District of Missouri is the murder capital of the United States. Violent crime and property destruction are out of control. The district encompasses all of the city of St. Louis and the northern and central portions of the surrounding suburban St. Louis County.

Entire neighborhoods that were populous and safe as recently as the 1960s — including where I lived as a child at that time in north St. Louis city — have become depopulated zones where little but rubble can be seen over a long horizon.

The city’s chief attractions are the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team and the St. Louis Blues hockey team. Fatal shootings and other violent crimes now are rampant near the downtown baseball stadium and hockey arena.

The city’s July 4th celebration, which used to draw half a million people to celebrate with music and fireworks on the grounds of the Gateway Arch overlooking the Mississippi River, this year drew at most 50,000, and the celebration was marred by shootings and other violent crime. (READ MORE from Joseph P. Duggan: You Don’t Know Me: Take a Tour of Ferguson, Missouri)

The destruction of St. Louis and many of its suburbs has been accelerated by lavish spending from billionaire currency speculator George Soros and his son Alex, and disciplined activism by Democratic Socialists of America — the electoral army of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ “Squad.”

Soros dollars and DSA operations elected Kim Gardner as city prosecutor in 2016 and re-elected her in 2020. The same far-left network since then has elected a new city mayor, Tishaura Jones, and a new president of the board of aldermen, antisemitic extremist Megan Green, whose public safety policies are as Nero’s were to Rome. 

Gardner became so notorious for negligence in office that she resigned in 2023 under threat of emergency action by the state government to remove her. 

Meanwhile, the most stunning accomplishment of the Soros-DSA network has been to put one of its own in the U.S. Congress representing the 1st District. Democrat William Lacy Clay, Jr. had represented the district for 20 years, succeeding his father, who had been the district congressman for 30 years. Lacy Clay was a pillar of the Congressional Black Caucus. The elder Clay had been a founder of the caucus. The “Clay machine” was considered invincible.

Soros, Ocasio-Cortez, and the DSA overthrew all of that. In a manner similar to Ocasio-Cortez’s shocking upset of House Democratic Caucus leader Joe Crowley in 2018, Soros candidate Cori Bush vaulted from obscurity to defeat Clay in the 2020 primary. The DSA waged a stealth campaign with an extraordinary ground game. 

Representing the murder capital of the nation, Cori Bush is one of the most extreme forces for “defunding” the police and perhaps the most pro-criminal member of Congress. She is also under active investigation by federal prosecutors for alleged misuse of campaign funds.

The congresswoman also has called for defunding the Pentagon — which may be a key reason why defense contractor Emerson Electric has decided to vacate its world headquarters, which has been in Ferguson in the 1st district since it was founded 133 years ago. The headquarters of Boeing’s defense and space divisions also is — for now — in Cori Bush’s district, along with many defense subcontractors. 

Cori Bush also is one of the most vicious antisemites in Congress. More closely than any other member of Congress, she has aligned herself with Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-MI, who was censured by the House because of her sympathies for the Hamas terrorists. 

Antisemitism is an evil anywhere, but it hits especially hard in Cori Bush’s home constituency. 

In the 1st District are the principal Jewish neighborhoods of the St. Louis area, suburban towns including University City, Olivette, and Creve Coeur, where most of the area’s synagogues and Hebrew schools are. For more than a century, these neighborhoods gave refuge to survivors of pogroms and the Holocaust. Now they suffer the ignominy of being represented in Congress by a Hamas sympathizer.

Moderate Democrats are fed up with Cori Bush. They are supporting her challenger in the August 6 primary, Wesley Bell. 

Bell, an African American lawyer who entered politics as a member of the Ferguson City Council, won an upset primary victory in 2018 for the top prosecutor’s post in St. Louis County, a separate and much larger jurisdiction from Kim Gardner’s St. Louis city. 

Bell’s two terms as county prosecutor have been relatively free of controversy. He contrasts his support for effective policing against Cori Bush’s nihilistic “defund the police” ideology. He also underscores his support for the Jewish community against Bush’s antisemitism and sympathy for Hamas terrorists. 

Recent national coverage of the Bell vs. Bush contest focuses on the narrative that Bush is the next Hamas sympathizer to be knocked out following the primary defeat of Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY). This ignores the fact that the Missouri 1st District is not Westchester County, New York. (READ MORE: Rep. Jamaal Bowman and the Toxic Rot of the Squad)

The Cori Bush organization never should be underestimated. Bell has raised more money than Bush, but Bush’s DSA organization in 2020 proved it can overcome huge financial disadvantages. A recent private poll saying Bell was running one percentage point ahead of Bush might represent wishful thinking more than reality. The DSA under-the-radar operations for Bush always outperform her opinion polling. 

In this district, the Democratic nominee is guaranteed election in November. 

In 2022, 27 percent of the 1st District general election vote went against Bush and for the Republican and Libertarian nominees, who had virtually no funding. These voters are not completely disenfranchised, because in Missouri, anyone is allowed to vote in the primary election of his choice. 

It is not unusual for Democrats and independents to vote in Missouri Republican primaries, and vice versa. 

The danger and disgrace Cori Bush poses to St. Louis and the nation is a vital matter for everyone in the 1st District.

November will not matter in this district. Rational voters from every political party or none have a duty to our community to vote on August 6 to put Cori Bush out of office.

Take my congresswoman — please!

Joseph P. Duggan formerly worked in government and public affairs in Washington DC. He is now an entrepreneur in his native St. Louis.

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